Computing systems have a basic input/output system (BIOS) that controls the hardware elements within the computing systems. For example, BIOS may contain code to control a keyboard, a display screen, disk drives, and the like. Typically, the BIOS is stored in a read-only memory (ROM) chip that is part of the computing system. Because the BIOS is in ROM, it is always available for booting the computing system. In some computing systems, the BIOS may be copied and decompressed from ROM to a faster random access memory (RAM) each time the computing system is booted. This allows faster booting of the computing system and a smaller ROM storage size. The BIOS may also be stored in a flash memory chip that allows the BIOS to be updated if necessary.
In order to configure settings for the hardware elements controlled by the BIOS, a user interacts with a BIOS setup utility provided by a computer system manufacturer (i.e., original equipment manufacturer (OEM)). The BIOS setup utility may be accessed by a user who is physically interacting with the computing system running the local BIOS setup utility. In addition, some manufacturers provide a remote BIOS setup utility that allows a user to configure a computer system across a network. However, both the local utility and the remote utility are system-dependent. Therefore, a remote network utility from one manufacturer is not able to modify BIOS settings on a computing system from another manufacturer. In addition, while interacting with the BIOS setup utility, the operating system is not present. Thus, a system administrator is unable to remotely configure a set of computing systems, with an operating system present, from various manufacturers using an administrative application executing on a single remote administrator console.